


As Beautiful As You Are Now

by kalopsia (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kalopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Vriska Serket, but this has never been a story about you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Beautiful As You Are Now

"Gamzee isn't dead, you dope!"

If Terezi Pyrope were in position of fully functional ocular facilities, she would have blinked.

She does it anyways, eyelids fluttering over the burning mass of red tissue ( _darling, you'll never see again,_ ). She feels her eyelashes brush against her glasses, but nothing else changes. Vriska's grapefruit-skin fairysuit is still as intoxicatingly orange as ever, and if Terezi was completely honest with herself, it smelled delicious. No, Pyrope, it smells bitter. Bitter like grapefruit. Don't sniff so obviously, you dope.

"He went crazy and flipped his shit, or something like that," Vriska adds, rolling her eight eyes and scoffing. Terezi can smell her blueberry breath, and she decides that blueberry must be the taste of deceit.

"I can smell right through your lies!" Terezi declares, tightening her fists around her dragon cane ( _you've always wanted to fly away, haven't you?_ ) and feeling the warm metal of her coin in one gloved fist. But it is an action that goes not unnoticed by Vriska, who positions her hands on her hips and juts her chin and chest forwards. It sends a gust of sickeningly sweet (no, Pyrope, bitter. Bitter is the word you want, are you not a master of Alternian language?) orange powderdust directly into Terezi's olfactory system, and if they had still been five sweeps, five and a half sweeps -- anything but six sweeps --, Terezi might have...

...not have had to latch onto the world through her nose. Get a grip, Pyrope. And not just on your cane. Whose fault is it? She made you pay.

 _"That's totally crazy," Vriska declared, kicking her bright cherry red boot-clad feet as she sat, perched upon one of the countless fairytale balustrades dotting Prospit's golden honeycomb surface. "What is up with --_ those _????" She waves her left arm emphatically, several of her many pupils trained on the chalk-grey skin, and despite her disdain Terezi can smell the joy in her eyes and in her voice. (Terezi idly notes that she's never managed to associate an actual flavor with the skin of a troll. Chalk wasn't even a proper flavor! Every kind of chalk had a different taste! She reminds herself to come up with a better word. Was she not Terezi Pyrope, Master Alternian Wordsmith?)_

_Vriska's object of disdain was, of course, the glasses perched on Terezi's nose, glistening like a fresh cherry candy lollipop, matching Vriska's own boots._

_Terezi shrugs, the honeyed fabric of her dream pajamas rustling with the sudden motion as she props her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, staring glumly at a golden tower. Her back is to Vriska. All of Prospit was a fascinating experience for her, honey and toffee and golden caramel dripping around her, dotted with white marshmallow Prospitians, stiff carapaces like white chocolate shells. It was a fairytale candyland, and too bad the troll she happened to be sharing it with was her former sister._

_"Is that a Tavros I spy with mine keen nose?" She twists her torso, one long finger points up at the sky, and Vriska rolls her eyes with a hushed "uuuugh," for Terezi's aim is, as always, around eight troll feet too far to the left. Sometimes Vriska thinks Terezi is doing this all to spite her, and sometimes she thinks she's actually right._

_"Don't try to change the subject on me, Pyrope! We are having a seeeerious conversation!" Although Vriska manages to drag out the 'e' sound in 'serious,' her tone peters out rapidly as vision eightfold rises to watch the long-horned troll float through the Prospitian sky._

_For once, Terezi has no comeback. She did try to change the subject. And she succeeded! Terezi thinks she knows why the cherry red glasses are still perched upon the bridge of her nose, but she wasn't about to tell that to Vriska. Wasn't about to give her the satisfaction. Wasn't about to show weakness to Vriska, not again._

_Vriska stares, the wry smirk on her lips contrasting with the much gentler look in her eyes. She twists up her features to warp her expression further towards bitter, one corner of her mouth remaining crooked upwards as the rest of her face contorts. Her efforts fall on blind eyes, and on a blind nose for good measure. Finally, Vriska gives up, a determined 'siiiiiiiigh' slipping out from between blueberry pursed lips._

"Well, there was one murder I was responsible for. Only one, though!" She doesn't know why she's so quick to deny it. 

_"Well, Pupa," she says softly, "you're flying."_

"You know Tavros? That was me," Vriska boasts, pointing one thumb at her chest, right where she stabbed Tavros, right at the center of her Light insignia. He was practically target practice, made out to be just another troll she had to kill. What even made Pupa different? He was just an afterthought, another line of chocolate blood on her trail to glory.

"...I guess," she adds, more an afterthought than anything else.


End file.
